


An Open Door

by mostlyjustgoose



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Adventure & Romance, Comedy, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, F/M, Fix-It, Found Family, Gen, Mycroft needs a hug, Reconciliation, Sorry Not Sorry
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-14
Updated: 2018-10-14
Packaged: 2019-05-23 10:19:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 11,142
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14932383
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mostlyjustgoose/pseuds/mostlyjustgoose
Summary: For most of their lives, Mycroft has kept his younger brother at arm's length. But when the discovery of a devastating family secret threatens everything he knows, Sherlock must find a way to bridge the gap between them or risk losing more than his last surviving family.Like, say, summer itself.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> A couple of things!
> 
> I've borrowed from not only the movie Frozen but from the recent Broadway iteration, with bits and bobs lifted from British/Celtic folklore to fit the premise a little more soundly to the characters--along with a bunch of stuff I just straight made up.
> 
> The idea for this fic started to nag at me way back when season 3 aired, and I couldn't find a way I was satisfied with to incorporate almost anything from season 4 (except Redbeard, but we'll get there). My apologies, since I do love Eurus and what she adds to the family dynamic. Someday I'll find a way to do her justice, I promise!
> 
> This fic is dedicated to my dear friend Wren, whose insight into Mycroft's complicated inner workings has been unfailingly brilliant and continues to inform how I think about the character, and who is also just a super cool person (pun intended). Additional thanks and love to Briala, Gwen C, and Gabi, who are all incredible and inspiring, and to my brother.

For the first time all week, Mary regretted running away from the orphanage.   
  
It had been great at first—a grand adventure away from the stuffy, gray manor with its bazillions of rules. Since it was nearly midsummer, the weather was soft and pleasant, the woods full of edible berries and plants whose names she’d spent so much time memorizing in the dusty library. She could curl up in grass and moss to sleep, which was nice if sort of damp, and she didn’t need to use the rickety lantern she’d brought. Four straight days and nights of eluding people from town—shimmying up and down trees, picking her way through parts of the great wood that bordered Bakersport on its northern side—made her feel invincible in the way only a seven-year-old can: she had thrown herself into the unknown, and she was flying, and anything was possible.   
  
Then she found the sleigh.   
  
She was moving north, using the Great North Mountain as her compass point—towards the lakes that lay scattered around its feet, where people carved great clear blocks of ice from the frozen expanses year-round. Of course she wouldn’t go that far yet, she thought; she’d need to get a good pair of winter boots for that. Maybe if she found a hunter to apprentice herself to—   
  
A small sound tugged her back into the moment. Small, but consistent... a sound she recognized from the orphanage. Someone crying and trying very hard not to let anybody hear.   
  
Cautious, she moved towards it.   
  
As she got closer, the wood opened somewhat; she could see a well-worn path, not quite smoothed down into a road yet... and great slashes carved into the turf, perfectly parallel scars that curved straight towards the base of a thick oak tree. Chunks of board, painted in faded green and purple and pink, lay shattered where the scars ended; further back along the path Mary could see the sun glinting off the iron hoops of several barrels, also tumbled and broken.   
  
The crying was coming from under what had probably been the front seat. Mary peered under it.   
  
Curled up like a field mouse, shaking with little sobs, was a girl about Mary’s age. Her eyes were huge and brown and frightened, her cheeks grubby with tears.   
  
“Are you hurt?” Mary asked.   
  
The girl shook her head no.   
  
“Can you get out of there?”   
  
She thought about it for a moment, then gathered herself with a hiccup.    
  
“They’re not there, are they?”   
  
“Who?”   
  
“Mum and Dad.”   
  
“I didn’t see anybody.”   
  
The girl’s eyes filled, clouded with fresh tears.   
  
Mary sat down in the churned-up grass, squirming out of the straps of her backpack so she could plop it down next to her. She was a lot sharper than the grown-ups at the orphanage thought—she listened to the groundskeeper, to the hunters who came the summer there were so many deer they nearly ate through part of the royal orchard nearby, to the town guard who brought back unsuccessful runaways. And by listening, she’d learned enough to know you had to be prepared for a lot when you packed to camp out in the woods.   
  
It took her a moment of rummaging to find her handkerchief.    
  
“Here,” she said, holding it out.    
  
The girl hesitated, then took it. Mary busied herself with the pack while the stranger scrubbed at her face and blew her nose.   
  
When the little snuffling sobs beside her had quieted somewhat, Mary pulled out a biscuit and a lump of cheese.   
  
“What’s your name?” she asked.   
  
“Molly,” the girl said. Mary noticed how her gaze strayed to the biscuit and cheese, held it out to her just as she had with the handkerchief.   
  
Little by little the story emerged: Molly’s mum and dad were merchants, on their way to deliver a shipment of supplies up to the ice miners, but they’d never taken this path through the forest before. They hadn’t known about the wolves who slid out of the shadows at night to chase anything that moved. And there had been a horrible crash and she’d been thrown under a piece of the sleigh as it fell apart, and for the whole night she’d huddled in her makeshift shelter in terror.   
  
There was a smear of red at the base of a nearby tree. Mary tried very hard not to think about it.   
  
“Do you have any brothers or sisters?” Mary asked, when Molly was done unwinding her story. Molly’s shoulders hunched, and a lonely little sound that might have been a ‘no’ came from her corner under the sleigh.   
  
“Then I’ll be your sister.”   
  
And she’d coaxed Molly out from under the sleigh with stories of how she was going to be a hunter or an explorer, maybe even find the Hidden Folk who were supposed to live in the woods and the hills, and for six days and nights the adventure got a little grander. Molly wasn’t squeamish or scared of bugs, and in her own pack (salvaged from the wreckage of the sleigh) she had a fat book on healing herbs and how to use them to treat diseases; they huddled together under the light of the lantern reading about how to cure summer shakes and winter fevers.   
  
But on the seventh day things started to go wrong, right from the very beginning of the day. As she was waking up, Mary accidentally knocked over the lantern, and most of the oil spilled into the grass. When they stopped for lunch Mary realized with a sinking jolt that the food she’d brought was almost gone, now that there were two of them sharing. All the blackberry bushes they found were full of prickles, unripe green fruit, and big croaking ravens who tried to bite them with clacking beaks when they reached into the brambles. And though she could still see the Great North Mountain rising above the trees, they hadn’t seen any other people—or even a road—since they’d left the shattered sleigh behind.   
  
As night fell, misty streaks of light feathered their way across the darkening sky; owls began to call to one another in the wood. Much as Mary wished that the light above them or the fireflies that winked in and out of the warm air would begin to pick out a magic path for her and her new sister, the forest stayed dark and unfathomable.    
  
They were lost, and they would be out of food the next day, and somewhere in this forest were wolves hungry enough to chase a sleigh—   
  
And then Molly grabbed her hand.   
  
“Listen,” she whispered.   
  
Mary went still. Somewhere distant was a familiar, urgent sound: hoofbeats. Horses. Getting louder—coming closer.   
  
Coming towards them.   
  
She barely had time to pull Molly back when the horses came charging out of the wood. There were two of them, and they carried a sharp stinging wind in their wake—so cold it froze the grass in a long streak behind them.   
  
The trail of impossible ice sparkled, reflecting back little fragments of the rippling colors above them, as the horses raced off into the night.   
  
“Mary.” Molly was trembling, but her voice didn’t shake. “Did you see them?”   
  
“Yeah.” It had only been for a second—only enough to see that one rider was a man and the other a woman, each of them possibly carrying something. The chill drifted out of the air, but the ice remained, a path to follow.   
  
Mary grabbed Molly’s hand, and together they ran, the frost crackling underfoot.   
  
*   
  
Molly’s heartbeat rattled around in every part of her body like a moth knocking against the glass walls of a jar. The air around her rippled strangely: the night breezes were warm, but ice seemed to sting her face as she ran. Little dancing pinpricks of cold, in her nose, on her lips—she had to squeeze her eyes nearly shut so the ice didn’t sting them. Ahead of her, Mary’s wild gold hair glinted with the green and purple of the shimmering sky.   
  
She ran till her feet were numb with cold, till her lungs felt like they would burst. She ran till she felt like she had been running forever, like she had been born running, like there was nothing in the world but running—   
  
—and then suddenly the ice needles stopped, and Mary was tugging her up a little slope, their pace slowing as they navigated rocks and slender trees and, at last, dropped down behind the great gnarled shell of a tree stump.   
  
From where she lay, blinking moisture out of her eyelashes, Molly realized she could see down into a clearing. A small circle of stones, standing upright in the grass, shone palely under the summer starlight.   
  
Making their way to the center of that circle were three figures: a man, a woman, and a gangly boy. When the woman turned, Molly saw that she held something in her arms—something big, wrapped in a blanket or a cloak.   
  
The man stepped forward. He was dressed in a fancy jacket and trousers almost like a soldier’s, and—she could have sworn she recognized his face from somewhere. A book, maybe. Her heart was still beating too hard to let her think very clearly.   
  
She watched him raise his arms. Though she knew that his voice broke the thick quiet of the night, heard its commanding ring, they were too far away to make out the words.   
  
And then the Hidden Folk came.   
  
Melting out of trees, unfolding themselves from the shapes of rocks, rising out of the grass and mist, they came. They looked like people, with the same comfortably familiar shapes of people, but they seemed to be made of the landscape itself. Their skin was bark and stone and earth and smoke, and they moved almost silently, a curious murmur rising as they began to cluster together at the outer edge of the stone circle.   
  
One of the Folk stepped forward into the circle—a figure that Molly might have mistaken for someone’s grandma, if she hadn’t had curly brambles for hair and tiny green leaves sprouting all over her birchbark skin. And the man who had spoken gestured to the woman, who stepped forward and held out the thing she was carrying.   
  
It was another boy.   
  
His face was as pale as the stones. His eyes were closed, and he wasn’t moving, except for little shivers now and again. As if he were freezing.   
  
The tree-lady put a hand on his forehead, frowning for a moment. When she looked up, she said something that Molly didn’t catch but that made both the man and the woman seem to light with relief. A few steps behind them, the other boy stood, tense, hesitating.   
  
All of a sudden a light rose from the tree-lady’s hand, blossoming in the air above the circle, forming pictures. Just like the voices below her, Molly couldn’t quite make out what they were, only the vague shape of them.   
  
All of the pictures contained the same two boys, one smaller than the other; even at this distance Molly thought she could see them both smiling. Then the tree-lady sang something, and the pictures changed—not the smiles, only the colors and shapes around them. The cloud grew lighter and lighter, its glow seeming to pulse in time with the lights above, and then it curled in on itself and sank gently back into the pale boy.   
  
His shivers eased, and the woman folded him in close again. The words still weren’t clear, but Molly could tell from the soft high sound of her voice that she was thanking the tree-lady.   
  
Then the other boy stepped forward. Molly saw him square his shoulders, like so many boys she knew would do when they were trying to look braver than they felt. When he spoke she could hear him trying to imitate the clear tone of the man now a few strides behind him.   
  
The tree-lady lifted her arms, and another shimmering picture appeared in the air, as if it were being spun out of the lights above. In the picture, a man’s silhouette—outlined in blue so brilliant it made Molly’s eyes smart—stood surrounded by dimmer figures, around him in a ring just like the standing stones. The brilliant figure lifted its arms, and tiny white shapes like stars began to dance around it, swirling back and forth, in and out of strange patterns. For a moment Molly thought the other people in the picture might be dancing too, swaying in sheer delight.   
  
Then a cloud began to appear over the figure’s heart: small, red, glowing fiercely. That red light spread through the circle of people, like blood leaking into water. Though the brilliant figure held up its hands, the circle closed around it—tightening suddenly, the red drowning out the brightness, condensing into a cloud of rusty smoke.   
  
There was a loud noise, like something snapping. Molly realized, as she turned her attention back to the boy, that there was a nearly perfect circle of frost at his feet. His breath was a slow white coil of mist.   
  
The man stepped forward, put a hand on the boy’s thin shoulder, said something that sounded—not exactly sharp, Molly thought; it was more like he was saying something in the way grown-ups did when they were going to tell you something only once and you had better remember it.

Then the man and the woman and the boy all bowed deeply to the Folk, and left the stone circle. One by one the Folk melted back into the landscape, winking out of sight like stars right before sunrise, until only the tree-lady was left.  
  
She stood a moment, looking up at the slow movement of the colors above them, almost as still as a real tree for a moment. Except then she turned, her face still tilted up, and Mary squeezed her hand tight at the exact moment she realized the tree-lady knew they were there.

“You poor dears,” said a warm and creaking voice in the dark. “That must have been awfully confusing.”


	2. Years Between

SIX MONTHS LATER

Sherlock lay on the floor, looking up at the ceiling through the tuft of white hair that drooped over his forehead, bored out of his mind.

Being a prince was, he decided, infinitely worse than fairy stories would have you believe--at least when you were seven. Instead of getting to do fun stuff like going on adventures and slaying dragons and solving impossible riddles, you had to spend most of your day with stuffy tutors who were barely half as clever as you. Not that it really mattered what happened during the other half of the day, either: Mum and Dad were busy running the kingdom until dinnertime, and if Mycroft wasn’t with them or the tutors he was holed up in his own room.

He’d liked it much better when they’d shared. Not just the room, but lessons, books, games--even meals, which his big brother barely took at the table anymore. Mum said that two growing boys each needed plenty of space to stretch out, but Sherlock was starting to have his doubts. Mycroft’s new room was almost at the other end of the castle; when he was at dinner he barely even looked at his little brother.

Not for the first time, the thought crossed his mind that maybe there was a kind of test in all of this. Dad had read him a story once about a girl who couldn’t speak for three years, three months, three weeks, and three days (which was, to a seven-year-old,  _ absolutely forever), _ as part of the trials she had to go through to break a spell… but, as Dad had firmly reminded him, magic wasn’t real. Nobody really  _ needed _ to be silent for that long, unless they were just proving that they could.

He rolled onto his side, looking up at the window. Fat, fluffy clumps of snow had been falling since early that morning. By now a thick blanket of white had settled over the city roofs and the hills beyond--perfect weather for a sled race or a snowball fight.

And he’d had more than enough of being bored for the day.

*

“Here, dear. Try these on for size.”

Obediently--or at least quietly--Mycroft watched his mother reach into the small wooden box she’d brought him. The gloves she drew out were white, so thin that he thought at first they must be fabric; only when she handed them to him did he realize they were expertly worked leather.

“Are they enchanted?” he asked, trying not to sound hopeful.

“No.” The Queen offered him an apologetic smile. “We’re still looking for someone who knows anything about this sort of magic.”

_ Of course not, _ Mycroft thought. Six months of scouring the royal library had yielded more materials about the kingdom’s heraldry system and ancient traditions of embroidery than anything remotely related to his condition. He swallowed back disappointment: after all, he was the Crown Prince of Albion and nearly fourteen--far too old to dissolve into childish tears over the impossible.

He straightened his spine, squared his shoulders, and reached for the gloves.

The fit was almost perfect, the leather soft and supple. Nowhere near as clumsy as the woolen gloves and mittens Mum and Dad made them wear for cold-weather public appearances--these were probably fine enough to let him turn the pages of a book without fumbling, though he’d probably need a little practice…

A sharp  _ bang _ rattled the door of his room. 

“Mycroft!”

_ Bang, bang, bang. _

“Mycroft! Let’s go make a fort!”

_ Bang, bang. _

“I put a ruler on the windowsill to measure--the snow’s almost five inches deep now! And I brought my sled so we can race on the hill down by the river--”

“Go away, Sherlock.”

“But--”

“I said go away! I’m busy!”

There was a short silence, and then a tiny, defeated, “Fine,” followed by the sound of small feet pelting at top speed away from the door.

“Mycroft,” his mother said gently, her eyes soft with regret.

“The Hidden Folk said he shouldn’t know,” Mycroft said, horrified to hear his own voice cracking. “He can’t know.”

“It won’t be forever, my darling,” she murmured. And though she folded him into her arms to reassure him, a queasy sort of doubt settled at the pit of his stomach, a chill that cut through her familiar warmth. 

*

FOUR YEARS LATER

The decree was the first of its kind in generations, and the subject of endless rumors throughout the capital city: the King and Queen would be searching the kingdom’s orphanages for a third child to bring up alongside the two Princes. Certainly the royal family had always supported the widowed and orphaned among their own people, but it had been decades since any monarch had fostered a child. 

Of course there were already rumors about the Crown Prince. Some had feared the worst years before, when two-thirds of the staff were let go--a move clearly meant to cut down on gossip. The few who stayed reported (quietly, mind you, and never without currency changing hands) that there didn’t seem to be anything  _ wrong _ with him. Granted, he spent most of his time in his room, but he was polite and lucid, and his tutors were openly astonished at his aptitude for affairs of state.

His brother, though, was a different matter entirely.

It was clear to the frazzled servants (who always had far more to say about the younger prince and his destructive habits) that the boy needed to get out. With books and tutors making up most of the company he kept at all, he had grown a bit wild. When he was permitted to attend court with his parents, he couldn’t keep his blunt observations to himself.  _ Playing deduction,  _ he called it, though most of the adults in his life would have simply called it rude.

Unfortunately, though it was evident he needed some company his own age, an entire orphanage’s worth of children had already decided they were wholly uninterested in spending their time with a weirdo.

The King and Queen were nothing if not stubborn, though. Even as their younger son grew increasingly sullen and their older son increasingly withdrawn, they kept up the search.

Which was how, shortly after midwinter, Sherlock found his construction of a model pirate ship interrupted by yet another visit.

The door of his room swung open, and a boy peered in, taking in the bookshelves and scattered papers and Sherlock’s growing beetle collection.

“Hi,” he said. “Can I come in?”

Sherlock glanced up at him, eyes narrowing.

“Suit yourself,” he said at last, turning his attention back to the half-built clipper.

The other boy moved into the room, the caution in his first few steps melting away as he looked around. His expression was open and alert, more curious than anything else--none of the stammering fear or desperate hope most of the other applicants had brought with them. 

“Did you catch all those yourself?” He pointed towards the frame on the wall above Sherlock’s bed, where he’d mounted a dozen different beetle carapaces.

“Yeah. You can find most of them in the gardens. The head gardener says there’s more now that they don’t have a full staff, but that just means there’s more to catch, so I don’t know why he’s complaining.”

“Don’t those green ones eat roses, though? That’d make me complain if I were a gardener.”

Again Sherlock looked up, staring hard at this interloper. The boy didn’t flinch or start apologizing, as so many before him had done. Instead he trotted over to the table where the prince was sitting and hauled himself into one of the tall chairs. 

Most people were fazed by the stare within seconds. This boy simply swung his dangling feet slightly and stared right back. He was shorter than Sherlock, though not by much, and whoever had last cropped his blond hair had done a terrible job of it.

“So how do you play?” he asked abruptly.

Sherlock blinked. “I’m not playing. I’m making a model ship.”

“I can see that,” the boy said. “I mean deduction. I heard some of the guards talking about it when they brought us in from the orphanage. How do you play?”

None of the others had ever asked him that. When someone did want to play with him during one of these interviews, it was all boring baby games or beating him up and calling it playing. Not to mention all of the adults who knew about playing deduction had something to say about keeping his mouth shut around his elders.

He put down the small cloth sails he’d been fiddling with, brushed the white curl off his forehead. (A year earlier he’d tried to shave it off with Dad’s razor, but it grew back exactly the same. True, there were worse things he could be stuck with, but he thought it made him look a little like a skunk sometimes.)

“Well,” Sherlock said, slowly. “You look at somebody and figure out things about them without asking them to tell you. You can tell a lot about people just by looking at their clothes or how they carry themselves.”

“Like how?”

Sherlock swung one leg idly under the table, considering the facts in front of him.

“Your dad was a soldier, but you didn’t have any other family, so when he died you had to go into the orphanage. Your room there has a window that faces east. You’re left-handed, you like climbing big trees, and you broke your leg last year but it’s all better now.”

The boy’s eyes had grown to the size of saucers as he spoke. His mouth hung open slightly. 

“Whoa,” he breathed. “How did you know all that?”

“I didn’t know. I noticed.”

This was, he’d learned from experience, usually the point in an interview where his visitor would run out crying, or try to punch him. People didn’t like to hear that the details of their own lives were so obvious to him.

And this boy  _ grinned. _

“That’s amazing.”

Caught off-guard, Sherlock sat back a little.

“Really?”

“Yeah. It’s like a magic trick.”

“There’s no such thing as magic.”

“Yeah, but magic tricks aren’t really magic, are they? It’s just being clever enough to make people think they are.”

All at once the model ship no longer looked like the ideal way to spend an afternoon.

“What’s your name?” Sherlock asked. 

The boy giggled. “What, you can’t guess it?”

“I don’t guess,” he nearly huffed.

“It’s John. John Watson.”

“Do you know how to skate?”

“Yeah, why?”

“There’s a pond in the gardens on the south side that froze over yesterday.”

John’s grin only grew wider.

“Last one there’s a rotten egg,” he said, and nearly sprang down from his chair. Sherlock went pelting after him at top speed.

*

There was another note under Mycroft’s door.

There had been a note on average every few days for the last several years. Always written in code, in ciphers, little puzzles for him to solve. Sometimes there would be a treasure attached: a tuft of fox fur, a butterfly’s wing, a pressed flower, once a live stag beetle.

(The closest Mycroft had come to tears since his fifteenth birthday had been when he’d accidentally frosted his room after a frustrating day and realized what the ice flowering across the walls of the beetle’s small glass tank meant for the creature inside.)

He wanted to reach for the slip of paper. But it had been a difficult morning so far: he’d had the geometry tutor with the terrible breath and the droning voice, and already he’d given himself a pounding headache with the effort of keeping the sharp tingling in his palms from building into a pressure that threatened to crack him. If he ruined the note there would be no salvaging this day at all. 

A soft knock sounded at the door--not Sherlock; either he pounded with his whole fist rather than knocking like a normal human being, or he slipped a note under the door and ran away. 

“Yes?” Mycroft asked. He was no longer proud of how steady his voice could sound when he was anything but steady internally. It was just a trick he could do, a layer between himself and the world he slipped on as easily as his gloves.

“It’s me.” His father, voice gentle as ever. “I thought you should know--we found the boy we’ll be fostering.”

Something in Mycroft’s chest went very tight and very still.

“Did you?”

“Yes. His name is John. He and your brother are playing in the garden; you should come down and say hello.”

Playing. He knew he was too old to play, that even without his condition he would still have been expected to spend most of his time preparing for the constant and demanding work of running a kingdom. But he could remember a time when that hadn’t been the case, when he’d had someone small and wide-eyed to share silly secrets with and chase through the halls till their lungs ached.

“Maybe later,” he said, feeling a slow film of frost creep over his palm beneath the glove.

*

TWELVE YEARS LATER

As per usual, Sherlock was running late for the meeting, and when he did make his way up to the throne room he was typically disheveled, his face smudged with soot from the experiment he’d just managed to keep from blowing up. John was already there, straight-backed and tense, beside Chancellor Smallwood.

“Fire’s out,” Sherlock explained cheerfully, before the details started to register. The set of the Chancellor’s mouth, the way John’s fists curled at his sides. 

“Sherlock.” His adopted brother shifted his weight, trying to draw himself up taller--even though Sherlock had long since shot up past him in height, he had always had a habit of trying to make himself look bigger when he really needed to get a point across. “You should sit down.”

“Should I? I don’t need to.” A beat, and then his face began to pull itself into a frown. “This isn’t another surprise interview with a princess, is it? Because I meant what I told you before, I’m not getting married till I’m at least twenty-five, and I’ve still got two years to go, so you can--”

“Your Highness,” the Chancellor interrupted. “It’s about your parents.”

Oh.

_ Oh. _

No--don’t assume without the facts. He swallowed around the sudden rusty sensation in his throat. They’d been headed to a wedding--a cousin he’d never met in a distant sunny kingdom to the west. They’d promised to be back in two weeks: five days’ journey by sea each way, with four days of celebration in between. They’d said it would probably be boring and they’d end up eating far too much, but it was family, and it was only a short trip.

“Problem?” he heard himself ask, but his voice broke.

“One of the escort ships arrived in port two hours ago.” The Chancellor inhaled, wetly. “The captain said it was the worst storm he’d seen in thirty years. Only six of his men survived. The other two ships...”

_ Oh. _

“Sherlock.” There was a hand on his shoulder, keeping him from turning to so much ash and blowing away. “You really should sit down.”

“But,” was all he could manage, though that one small word ricocheted around the inside of his skull.  _ But the traveling players Dad likes just got into town, and he’ll want to see them. But the blueberries Mum planted just started giving fruit this year.  _

_ But they said they would be back in two weeks. _

And that word grew so loud, building to a chorus of endless echoes in his head, that though he saw Chancellor Smallwood’s mouth moving he heard nothing of what she was telling him. His mouth had gone dry; a hideous hot blurring was starting to distort his vision.

_ But they’re my parents. _

 

*

On the ceiling of Mycroft’s room was a small, ragged-edged patch where the paint had flaked away from the rafters to reveal the dark wood beneath. He kept his eyes trained on it now, staring hard, wishing for the thousandth time that he could reduce himself so he could crawl up and hide there, invisible, untroubled.

That patch of wood was all he could bear to look at.

Chancellor Smallwood had knelt in front of him, and he’d  _ known, _ even before the words were out. Frankly he wasn’t at all sure how he’d managed to keep control with the knowledge ringing in his head, sinking down into the marrow of his bones along with the attendant weight of responsibility. Somehow he’d gotten through the brief report, the condolences, the quiet assurance that Albion would observe the customary two months of mourning before his coronation, making his mouth form sentences he didn’t hear, making his body stand still.

After an eternity, she left him alone, with his thoughts and the patch of wood on the ceiling, and the constant chilly silence.

Without looking, he knew there would be frost on the floorboards, ice crawling towards the feet of his bedstead. Tiny pinpricks of cold touched his forehead, cheeks, the ridge of his brow, drifting soundlessly down to settle in his clothes.

This hadn’t been the plan at all.

They’d agreed six months ago: they would give it a few more years, present a united front to wear down Sherlock’s resistance to the concept of even meeting with potential marriage candidates, and then his parents would formally turn over the crown. Easy, smooth, the prospect of a niece or nephew to inherit the throne lined up, everything perfectly simple.

They’d reassured him they were his allies in this plan, just as they’d reassured him they would be back in two weeks.

_ Bang, bang, bang. _

The doorframe rattled. 

“Mycroft!”

Mycroft’s lungs constricted, turning his inhale into an abbreviated gasp.

_ Bang, bang, bang. _

“I know you’re in there.” 

Wet, angry, wobbling, Sherlock’s voice was an accusation in itself. 

_ Bang, bang. _

“Damn it, open the door!”

_ Bang. _

_ Bang. _

Then there was a soft thump, as of a body leaning hard into the door. A shaky exhale that made Mycroft’s hands curl in on themselves so tight his short nails nearly bit through the gloves. 

“Coward,” Sherlock rasped.

Feathery patterns of ice began to creep over the exposed wood, turning it pale, hardening layer by layer.

_ Long live the King, _ Mycroft thought, and pretended not to hear his brother’s footsteps retreating down the hall.


	3. Coronation Day

It was nearly summer, and Bakersport was in bloom, as if to pay homage to Albion’s new king. Everyone wore their brightest outfits, whether worn cotton or fine silk; women wove flowers into their hair, and children decked themselves in whatever ribbons or beads or small fragments of color they could find. The mourning that had hung over the city, over the kingdom, had dissipated in the soft gold glow of dawn.

The castle gates would be open at noon. Since first light, merchants from all over the kingdom had been staking out little squares of territory along the main road that led from the harbor to the castle. There were bowyers with exquisitely carved toy weapons, advertising the quality of work they could do for adults. There were milliners with commemorative bonnets and weavers with great lengths of summerweight wool; there were farmers with snowy white geese and brass-feathered roosters, and glassblowers with marbles and beads and all sorts of glittering objects.

Mary and Molly had arrived shortly after dawn—just in time to snag a prime spot within five minutes’ walk of the gates. Their battered sleigh, repurposed from the skeleton of one they’d found half-rotten and abandoned, was weighted down with a strange collection of goods: three great blocks of ice and several rickety boxes full of glass bottles. Tethered nearby, with a handmade sign round his neck that read _PLEASE DO NOT FEED ME CANDY,_ was the sturdy reindeer who’d pulled them down the hillside and into town, looking unimpressed that Molly had decked his antlers with green and yellow ribbons.

The sisters were dressed to match his finery—Mary in fine green trousers and a soft white-and-green blouse, Molly in a new yellow sundress. Happy colors, to make them seem more approachable, or at least that was their excuse for spending so much of their hard-won savings. Besides, as Mary pointed out, it was an investment in their business; nobody really wanted to buy shaved ice or medicine from someone who looked like she just rolled out of a haystack.

Molly had been all nervous energy for nearly a week leading up to the coronation; now that the day had arrived she felt like a sparrow, bouncing every which way as she checked and re-checked the sleigh. They’d never sold to this many people before—they’d barely even seen this many people before.

“You’re fluttering,” Mary said patiently, without looking up from the row of bottles labeled _FOR YEAR ROUND COUGHS._

“Really?”

“Like a whole flock of butterflies. You’re going to make Toby nervous.”

“Toby doesn’t get nervous. Do you, sweetheart?” Molly buried her fingers in the coarse fur under the reindeer’s chin. “That’s right. You’re solid as a rock, aren’t you?”

Toby chuffed softly, the ribbons on his antlers swaying.

“You spoil him,” Mary said fondly. Truthfully, they both did—and had done ever since they had stumbled across him as an awkward baby, making pitiful noises as he ambled through the forest looking for his mother.

Molly stuck out her tongue.

“If you’re looking for something to do, you could unpack the syrups,” Mary suggested. They’d spent nearly as much time preparing those as they had their remedies, boiling fruit and honey down into liquids they could drizzle over ice.

“Oh—yeah, of course.” Gathering up her skirts, Molly hopped back into the sleigh. “We’re on the parade route, right?”

“I think so.”

“Do you think we’ll see the King and the Princes?”

“Maybe, if we stand on Toby’s back.” The reindeer shot them a look as if to say, _Not on your life._ “I bet they’re not much to look at anyway. And isn’t one of them technically a Duke or something?”

“Archduke, actually.”

The voice came from behind them; both women whirled.

Mary immediately wanted to sink through a crack in the cobblestones.

Leaning on a lamppost, beaming a lopsided grin at them, was a young man—blond, the medals on his finely tailored jacket proclaiming him a high-ranking officer in the army, and possibly the single most handsome man Mary had ever seen.

“Or that’s what I hear,” he added, dark blue eyes glittering.

“Oh.” _Great, Mary, very intelligent._ “Yeah. Archduke.”

“Can we help you?” Molly asked brightly.

“That’s what I’m trying to figure out. Everyone else has a sign out, but all I can see you ladies advertising is a reindeer who shouldn’t have sweets.”

“Shaved ice and home remedies.” Okay. This was neutral ground. And even if he was good-looking, they were here to do business above all else.

One of his sandy eyebrows lifted. “That’s an unusual combination.”

“Not really.” A deep, centering breath. Right. Business. “Medicine goes down easier with something sweet. Especially when you’re trying to treat children or older people. And we do sell the syrups too, if you’ve got a stubborn patient at home.”

Now that she was easing into familiar territory, Mary felt somewhat steadier. Even if she did wish his smile wasn’t quite so sunny and his eyes weren’t quite so blue.

“That’s pretty clever,” he said. “So what have you got?”

“Fever reducers, cough syrups, medicines to ease joint pain and headaches, that sort of thing. Or if you meant flavors, there’s apricot, cherry, rhubarb...”

The stranger leaned towards her a little.

“Have you got anything for a sudden-onset heart condition?” he asked, looking her straight in the eye.

“Foxglove,” Molly put in. Mary wanted to throttle her.

Before she had the chance, though, a stooped figure all in black came wobbling up to the handsome stranger, a pale hand emerging from its sleeve to pluck at his shoulder.

“Alms for a poor old lady,” a voice wheedled from somewhere inside the wrinkled garment. “Alms for coronation day.”

The man started to dig in his pocket—and then he looked closer at the figure, and his face drew itself into a frown.

“Ah. Would you ladies excuse me? I think I’d better see about getting this woman something to eat. Good luck today,” he added, and then, with a last glance at Mary: “I’ll be back to try the apricot.”

“Sure,” she breathed. “Yeah. Thank you.”

As the stranger shuffled the old woman away from them and into the growing crowd, Molly sidled up next to her sister, grinning.

“Your ears are red,” she pointed out. “Looks like you could use some ice for them.”

“One of these days I’m going to throw you in the river.”

“Mm-hmm. Just make sure you save it for after we make a giant pile of money—I like this dress.”

*

As quickly as he could manage, John hustled the beggar woman towards an alley too narrow for any merchant stalls. She turned towards him, likely to protest, but with a sharp movement he tugged back the hood covering her face to reveal—

“Sherlock, what the hell are you doing here?”

With a disappointed noise, his adopted brother straightened, a catlike stretch returning him to his full height.

“I’d ask you the same thing, but it was pretty obvious from the way you were flirting with that woman.”

“You need to be getting dressed!”

“I am dressed.”

John inhaled, willing himself not to wallop Sherlock in the back of the head.

“I mean for the parade and the ceremony,” he said, as patiently as he could manage.

Sherlock pulled a face at him. “Relax. It’ll take half an hour at most. That leaves me plenty of time.”

“Time for what, exactly?”

“Reconnaissance.” There was an odd little spark behind those blue-green eyes, one that John knew from experience meant his brother had some sort of harebrained scheme in the works. “We haven’t had this many ships in port since I was born.”

“And?” John prompted.

“And they’ll all be leaving before the end of the week. I just have to decide which destination I want to see first.”

“Hang on, sorry—are you telling me you’re running away?”

The look Sherlock gave him was one he’d grown both fond of and deeply irritated by over the years since John had joined the family. It was one that said, clearly if good-naturedly, _Bless you and your very small brain._

“If you want to be reductive about it, yes. Besides, we’ve talked about this. I’m not staying cooped up here forever with some boring horse-faced princess so my brother can have an heir to the throne.”

Well. They _had_ talked about it at length, over the years, but John had always sort of assumed that either their parents or Mycroft would talk him out of it. Or at least come up with a compromise.

“You’re coming with me, of course.”

Wait, what?

“Now hang on a minute,” John began, and was promptly interrupted by the peal of a distant bell.

Sherlock twisted towards the source of the sound, the white curl tumbling over his forehead. “That’s our forty-five minute warning. Come on, it’s only eight minutes back to the castle from here. I’ll race you.”

“In my dress uniform?” John nearly squawked, but his brother had already taken off running.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the curious, plants in the foxglove family (genus Digitalis) have been used as heart medicine since the late 18th century. 
> 
> Also poison. Please do not eat foxglove.


	4. King Anointed

For the fifth time that morning, Mycroft stood in front of his writing desk, staring at the two objects on his blotter: an unburnt candle in a silver holder and a small lacquered music box.  
  
Since the day after the announcement that their parents had been lost at sea, he’d been practicing this. Once in the morning, once in the evening, sometimes when he couldn’t sleep. Centering himself in the silence of his room, clearing his mind of noise and clutter and concern, making himself as blank as a snowy hillside.  
  
He glanced up at the portrait above his desk: his mother on her own coronation day, young and straight-backed, clear blue gaze fixed firmly ahead of her, expression determined but not frightened.  
  
In her right hand she held the scepter of Albion’s kings; in her left the seal of office.  
  
Inhale.  
  
Exhale.  
  
Inhale.  
  
Bare-handed, Mycroft reached for his props.  
  
He had read the text of the coronation ceremony a hundred times—at least half of those aloud to himself, timing the length of the words. At most, if the priest spoke slowly, he would have to hold seal and scepter for one minute. His current record was a minute and fifty-seven seconds; he probably could have gone at least fifteen seconds longer if he hadn’t heard his brothers walking down the corridor past his room.  
  
His brothers. The largest window in his room overlooked the somewhat overgrown southern gardens; for the last twelve years he’d watched shreds and patches of their growing up. Alone, removed from their private world, he had watched them play and fight and make up and invent new games. He had watched Sherlock sit with a book, making notes in the margins. He had seen John climb the wall to chat to people on the other side. Day after day, he had swallowed back the desire to join them, to know them, to be something other than the responsible and solitary Crown Prince.  
  
But the gloves that rested beside the candlestick were his silent, constant reminder that he could not approach the sphere of their lives.  
  
The gloves were, he had to admit, exquisite. The leather was supple, skillfully imprinted with his initials and royal sigil as Sovereign King of Albion. The stitching was tight and even, evidence of careful craftsmanship; the leather itself was dyed in swirling shades of blue, his favorite color.  
  
And for a full minute today he would be without them, in front of practically the entire country.  
  
Exhale.  
  
Inhale.  
  
Exhale.  
  
The music box was first, scooped gently into the palm of his left hand; the fingers of his right hand closed around the candlestick a heartbeat later. Mycroft lifted his head, chin tilted up proudly and shoulders squared, imagining a sea of random faces watching him.  
  
Inhale.  
  
Exhale.  
  
Inhale.  
  
The cadence of the words rolled through his head: the blessing in the old tongue, asking every power under Heaven to bestow wisdom and strength on the new monarch, formally investing him with the office he had inherited. By the door of his room, the grandfather clock kept time, steady as ever.  
  
Ten seconds.  
  
Twenty seconds.  
  
Thirty seconds.  
  
His palms began to tingle.  
  
Forty seconds.  
  
Forty-five.  
  
Fifty.  
  
A soft crackling whispered through the still air of his room. His fingers were cold and stinging now.  
  
Fifty-two.  
  
Fifty-four.  
  
Fifty-six.  
  
Tendrils of frost began to creep over his right thumb.  
  
Fifty-eight.  
  
Fifty-nine—  
  
Someone tapped quietly on his door, the respectful knock of a servant. All at once Mycroft let out a rush of breath.  
  
“Yes?” he asked, finally venturing to look down at his hands. The music box was rimed with frost; tiny spikes of ice clung to the candlestick.  
  
“Your Majesty.” The voice was Chancellor Smallwood’s. “The carriage is ready. It departs for the cathedral in fifteen minutes. Both of your brothers are already downstairs.”  
  
“Thank you, Chancellor.”  
  
He had already dressed for the coronation—a suit of silk and velvet, in black and indigo and royal purple, embroidered in gold. All that was left was to settle the weight of the long, ornate cape around his shoulders.  
  
Exhale.  
  
Inhale.  
  
Exhale.  
  
“Tell the captain of the guard to begin final checks,” he said, drawing his gloves on. “The gates open at noon precisely.”  
  
“Yes, Your Majesty.”  
  
*  
  
By some miracle John had managed to wrangle Sherlock into getting dressed; in his dove-grey suit he looked so much like their father that it made the long bones of Mycroft’s body ache with grief.  
  
But Dad himself had told him, long ago, that a King had to feel things differently from everyone else.  
  
_“Most people can be like windows,” he’d said, his eyes soft and faintly sad. “They can let everyone else look in and see what’s going on inside. But when you run a country, you have to make yourself a door. Keep what’s inside on the inside. You can’t let it show, my boy.”_  
  
So he’d closed himself up tight, kept himself a perfect blank to prevent anyone from seeing inside. He’d never spoken a word to another human being about the strange confusing heat that came over him when he saw a little knot of handsome castle guards chatting together. He’d never said anything about the nightmares that plagued him every year around Sherlock’s birthday, the ones he woke out of sweating with a fine film of ice on his palms. He’d never let anyone in past the threshold, never given a hint of the storms that raged within.  
  
But he hadn’t wept over any of those things, either. Not even in private. Better to keep it all inside where there was no risk of anyone discovering it.  
  
So he pushed the ache aside, and got into the royal carriage as gracefully as he could manage with the cape trailing behind him, and arranged his face into a bland and pleasant smile.  
  
_Keep what’s inside on the inside._  
  
Somewhere to the north and west, the bells of the Great Cathedral began to toll, pealing out the first stroke of noon.  
  
The carriage lurched and began to move.  
  
Above, the sky was a perfectly clear blue; the day had grown warm and bright, the air itself saturated by sunlight. A perfect day for a coronation.  
  
Mycroft couldn’t wait for it to be over.  
  
Across from him, his brothers fidgeted and craned their necks to try and get a better look at the crowd. Mycroft took the opportunity to study them in silence—though John looked nothing like anyone in the royal family, somehow he had an easy confidence that made it seem as if he’d been born one of them, and he wore it as well as his finery today.  
  
And Sherlock—  
  
Mycroft hadn’t been this close to him since their parents’ funeral. He looked far better now than he had then, for which Mycroft was silently grateful; he had nearly broken his own rules that day, had been terribly close to reaching out. Only the seventeen years of practice he had to his credit had kept him steady.  
  
“Have I got something on my face?”  
  
He was almost caught off-guard—but no, of course Sherlock knew he was staring, of course he was ready to challenge his big brother. Mycroft shifted his gaze to the crowds, eyes skipping over the sea of faces as if they were words on a page.  
  
“Not this time.” As a boy, Sherlock had been prone to grubbiness, always digging in something or needing soot scrubbed from his face. It had been a family joke, back when they had been a family.  
  
“Good. I’d hate to embarrass you on your big day.”  
  
There was a sharpness behind those words that dug into Mycroft, sinking somewhere behind his ribs. _Keep what’s inside—_  
  
They were both startled by a sudden whistle: while neither of them had been looking, John had taken the opportunity to stick his head out of the window and was now waving excitedly at someone. Mycroft leaned forward slightly, following his line of sight, just in time to watch a glass bottle full of amber liquid come arcing towards him. He caught it easily, grinning ear to ear, and blew a kiss to the young woman in green who had apparently thrown it. The crowd went wild for a moment, apparently charmed by this display.  
  
“Really, John?” Sherlock asked, as his brother settled back into his seat.  
  
“What? It’s a national holiday. Besides, did you _see_ her?”  
  
“I can see she lives in the woods and trims her nails with a paring knife.”  
  
“Yeah, well, you may not have a romantic bone in your body, but some of us believe in love at first sight.”  
  
“Ugh,” Sherlock replied, pulling a face as if John had made him swallow a bug. “It’s a slippery slope from love at first sight to seeing unicorns in the garden, John.”  
  
“Says you.”  
  
For a moment, Mycroft’s smile warmed, just a little.  
  
*  
  
Assuming the actual duties of office had been easy, as he’d been helping his parents run the kingdom since he was sixteen; enduring the endless pageantry of the coronation ceremony was an ordeal unlike any he’d previously experienced.  
  
Everything took an eternity. The long walk down the central aisle to the altar; the list of promises a monarch had to make to his people; the hymns—it all went on for what seemed like days. Truthfully, he’d read the text of the ceremony so often that he could let parts of it fade to nothing around him, staying cocooned within his thoughts.  
  
Not all of it, though. There were parts he turned his full attention to. For instance, the recitation of the names of Albion’s monarchs, dating back to the first king, who had allegedly been fathered by a dragon. He had always been curious about the kings and queens who had gone before, had spent quite some time researching their histories. In silence he listened, recalling what he had learned.  
  
Mad King Gereon, who had been unable to concentrate on anything other than birdwatching for more than ten minutes at a time, and his daughter the Regentrix Laima, who had quietly ruled the country while her father sketched nightingales. Erna, the Explorer Queen of antiquity, the first woman to scale the Great North Mountain. Queen Aurora the First and the Princess Consort Elinor, who together had rewritten Albion’s laws and ruled peacefully for fifty years. King Victor the Indomitable, who had survived six assassination attempts.  
  
And finally, his mother, Queen Caroline the Third, a woman of uncommon brilliance who had reformed the tax code and fallen in love with a common tailor, the man who became King Peter but who had always just been Dad to Mycroft.  
  
His name was a part of this list, now; his deeds would be a part of this country’s history.  
  
He just had to get through the rest of this damn circus act.  
  
Silent as a stone, he knelt before the Bishop to be anointed with a smudge of sacred oil and to let him set his great-grandfather’s crown on his head. Even if it wasn’t an ostentatious crown, the thing was far heavier than it looked. Then, as he rose to his feet, his gaze fell on the velvet pillow being handed carefully to the Bishop, and his heart stuttered.  
  
He heard a voice murmuring, “Your Majesty, the gloves,” and despite all his practice a tiny stab of panic stuck in his side.  
  
Exhale.  
  
Inhale.  
  
Exhale.  
  
For the space of several eternal breaths, he focused on working his gloves off, forcing his thoughts towards the most innocuous details in front of him. The swirling patterns of blue dye in the leather, shifting and changing as he tugged them off finger by finger. The wide worn patch on the Scepter of Albion where dozens of hands before him had held it; the small dent in the Seal where a nervous child Queen had dropped it.  
  
He could do this. He just needed to make it sixty seconds.  
  
Mycroft breathed a silent prayer to whatever power would listen that no one noticed his hands tremble as he reached out.  
  
Seal first, cradled in the palm of his left hand, then the Scepter in his right.  
  
Inhale.  
  
Exhale.  
  
Inhale.  
  
As he turned, he realized the entire crowd in the cathedral was rising to their feet—and, with a sudden jolt of clarity, he understood that the Bishop was waiting for everyone to stand before he began the blessing.  
  
It would take another thirty seconds, at least.  
  
Mycroft swallowed, his mouth suddenly dry, his entire body filled with a kind of cool numbness. Every sound in the cathedral fuzzed for a moment to nothing, to an incoherent whisper of meaningless noise, the only sound in the world the furious hammering of his heart.  
  
_No. Not today. Not here._  
  
_Keep what’s inside on the inside._  
  
_Be a closed door. Shut yourself tight. You’ve done this before—it doesn’t matter that it was with props, it still counts, please let it still count for anything. Please._  
  
His eyes stared straight ahead; his mind processed none of what he was seeing. Every breath clawed at him, harsh and too hot in his lungs.  
  
Exhale.  
  
Distantly, he was aware of someone close to him, speaking.  
  
The old tongue. The blessing.  
  
Inhale.  
  
He knew every phrase. Without meaning to, his mind translated, made the words stark black and white letters in his head—shadows passing over the frame of a door shut tight.  
  
_“By right of birth, and by the oath he has taken...”_  
  
Exhale.  
  
His fingertips were cold.  
  
_“...we call on Heaven and all its power to bless him, to grant strength and wisdom and mercy in equal measure...”_  
  
Inhale.  
  
Tingling had spread down into his palms, almost to the base of his wrists.  
  
_“...to make of him a worthy ruler and a good man, from this moment unto his last...”_  
  
Exhale.  
  
Tiny crystals of ice were spreading across the bottom of the Seal.  
  
_“...and to light his path as sovereign and defender of our great land...”_  
  
Inhale.  
  
And this time his lungs caught the breath and couldn’t let it go, because he had just noticed that a thin frost had begun to creep down between his fingers where they were wrapped around the Scepter.  
  
_“...in the names of all our blessed saints and ancestors, now and forever more.”_  
  
His heartbeat roared like a tidal wave, fear a towering darkness at his back.  
  
_Please. Please. Let it stay inside. Let it stay—_  
  
“Long live King Mycroft, first of his name!”  
  
He nearly dropped seal and scepter in his haste to pull his gloves back on. Only when he had watched his own fingers disappear under thin blue leather did he release the breath that had been trapped in his chest, so thick with fear he wondered that it didn’t steam in the summer air.  
  
He had done it.  
  
He had made it through.  
  
Now all he had to do was endure this thrice-damned party.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> They say “write what you know”, and that’s never felt truer than while I was working on a scene where a queer wizard has a panic attack in church.
> 
> Many, many thanks to K for providing me with monarch names, and to the other members of my writing group for their encouragement and advice. And to all those of you who’ve left comments!
> 
> Additionally, this chapter owes a lot to the tracks “Queen Anointed” and “Dangerous To Dream” from the Frozen musical, which are my favorite “new” songs. I highly recommend giving them a listen.


	5. Lovely Night

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> GUESS WHO'S BACK, BACK AGAIN. Sorry this took so long, everyone, but I didn't forget and I vow I'm going to finish this. If only to try and mitigate the prolonged anxiety attack that is 2018.
> 
> Onward!

“I don’t know if this is a good idea, Mary.”   
  
During the parade, her yellow sundress had seemed very fine indeed; now that they were actually at the castle gates, watching men and women go by in furs and taffeta and silk velvet, Molly felt downright mousy. She knew she smelled like reindeer and medicine, and her shoes were a disgrace.   
  
Her sister didn’t seem to care.   
  
Mary was either in love or not about to let a business opportunity go—or both, which was a thought that made Molly’s head spin. Admittedly her own heart had rocketed into her throat when she’d seen that the man with the nice smile from earlier was Archduke John himself, and thanks to him they had sold out of apricot syrup within half an hour. But the last thing Molly had expected once they had sold all their syrups and most of their medicine was for Mary to decide that she wanted payment for the bottle she’d thrown.   
  
Never mind that they were probably lucky they hadn’t been arrested for hucking blunt objects at a member of the royal family.   
  
“Listen, we don’t know when the gates will be open again.” They were passing by a fountain in the courtyard; Mary leaned over the water for a moment in hopes of catching a glimpse of her reflection. “We have to take the chance while it’s there.”   
  
“We?” Molly repeated, incredulous. “This is not a ‘we’ thing. This is between you and him.”   
  
Mary’s smile softened a little. “Guess so.”   
  
For the first time that day Molly found herself wondering why that nice gentleman couldn’t have been just some soldier on his day off, someone they wouldn’t have to chase down further than the local pub. An adventure was perfectly nice as long as it was out in the woods or the mountains; when it involved fancy people and fancy clothes it became less of an adventure and more of an extended anxiety attack. She just wanted to go back to the forest, to Grandmother Martha and the rest of the family, to count their earnings for the day and start planning something perfectly reasonable and not help her sister chase down royalty.   
  
“I just don’t think—” she began, before she realized one of the guards had caught sight of them and was swiftly approaching. Oh no. Oh, they were about to spend the night in jail for trespassing, she was sure of it...   
  
“Can I help you ladies?”   
  
Mary nearly bounced over, face alight with her most winning smile.   
  
“Actually, yes. I have some business with His Grace the Archduke.”   
  
“I, uh, don’t,” Molly put in, her voice rather small.   
  
The guard sized them both up with a glance, then turned her attention to Mary, eyes narrowing a bit.   
  
“I think I saw you earlier on the parade route,” she said. “Home remedies, right?”   
  
“And shaved ice, yes.”   
  
All at once the woman’s expression brightened. “Yeah, the captain brought us all ices when our shift changed.”   
  
Ices? Molly remembered at once—there had been an older gentleman in uniform who had bought ‘one of each of everything, darling, thanks very much and here’s half a crown for your trouble’.    
  
“Wait here a minute,” the guard said. “Things just got started, so His Grace shouldn’t be too busy.”   
  
“Thanks a million,” Mary nearly blurted, saluting as the woman headed back towards the great double doors.   
  
The second she was out of earshot, Molly turned saucer-wide eyes on her sister.   
  
“Word of mouth,” she murmured. “Best kind of advertising. If they like it we can start coming to town regularly. We could—Mary, we could start borrowing books from the library! We could study with apothecaries and improve our recipes! We could...”   
  
She trailed off, taking in the way her sister was fidgeting with her clothes, fussing with her hair, a flush rising on her cheeks. Decidedly not listening to her.   
  
_Either we’re going to end up banished or I’m going to have to get used to this level of fancy,_  Molly thought.    
  
But she did have one foolproof way of making sure Mary was paying attention.   
  
Shifting closer to Toby, she pitched her voice at a kind of rough and crackly growl.   
  
“Gee, I don’t know, Molly,” she said, and was immediately rewarded by the sight of her sister giving her a startled glance. “The Archduke is cute and all, but do you think they have carrots at the buffet inside?”   
  
Mary laughed, short and nervous. “You’re so weird sometimes.”   
  
“I learned it from the best,” Molly replied, dropping her ‘reindeer voice’. And then, because the thought kept tugging at her like a chilly breeze plucking at her hair: “Just... be careful, okay?”   
  
The worried crease between Mary’s eyebrows melted into nothing. Comprehension warmed her smile, and she reached over to squeeze Molly’s shoulder, gently protective as they’d been with one another from the beginning.   
  
“I will,” she said. “Promise.”   
  
“And remember our rule—”   
  
“—no matter how handsome he is, if he’s nasty to the servants, it’s over,” Mary finished. “Don’t you worry. I can handle myself.”   
  
Molly felt her own smile returning. “I know.”   
  
And then, bright and clear as a sunbeam, a newly-familiar voice cut into their conversation.   
  
“Hey, perfect timing!”   
  
They both turned to see the Archduke jogging towards them, his grin huge and brilliant even in the fading light of evening. Sort of like a happy puppy, Molly thought. Mary’s ears went pink.   
  
“I was hoping I’d see you again,” he said, warmly—though most of that warmth was directed solely at Mary. Not that Molly was put out by it; there was merely a kind of gentle, wondering envy stirring behind her ribs. _I wonder what it’s like, to be looked at like no one else exists._   
  
“Yeah,” Mary breathed, almost a nervous chuckle. “Didn’t expect you to take the parade route for the syrup.”   
  
“Well, you know. If you’re going to town, might as well go in a coach and four.” He shrugged, gaze flicking between them both. “Come on in, both of you. We can put your decorated friend up in the stables for a while,” he added, nodding towards Toby and his antler-ribbons.   
  
“Oh, um—” Molly fidgeted, casting what she hoped wasn’t obviously a panicked glance at her sister. “I, uh, well—”   
  
“Thank you,” Mary cut in. “That’d be great.”   
  
For a moment, Molly wanted to throttle her.   
  
*   
  
There were at least a hundred aspects of being royalty that Sherlock found unimaginably tedious. Having to waste an hour of a perfectly good party shaking the hands of visiting dignitaries in a receiving line was probably in the top ten items on that list.   
  
As a kid—back when they’d still had parties—he remembered he and Mycroft had stood beside their parents at the head of the line and played deduction together. _That lady thinks she’s going to trick Mum and Dad into changing a treaty. That man has false teeth because he eats too much candy. That bodyguard is actually the queen in disguise._  Invariably one of them would set off a fit of giggles in the other, and they’d be gently shooed off to have a piece of cake or slide down the bannisters until bedtime.    
  
Then Sherlock had been left to play by himself, and there was a great deal less laughter.   
  
John, from the day he’d become a part of the family, had enjoyed watching Sherlock play deduction. But he’d never really been able to keep up the way Mycroft had, and the older they grew the more often someone would pointedly step on Sherlock’s foot to try and stop the flow of information. Taking in the details and analyzing them was muscle memory, if such a thing could be said to exist for the brain; sharing them had become either a tic that burst out of him at exactly the wrong moment, or a matter of waiting out everyone around him so he could unpack it all in private.

More often than not it was the former. 

A duchess of something-or-other _(breeds large dogs, good at archery, fully intends to leave tonight’s event with a husband)_  fluttered into view and presented her hand to be kissed; distracted, Sherlock shook it, then ignored the judgmental huff as she flounced off to mingle. Not fifteen feet away Chancellor Smallwood looked on with a subtly maternal look of disappointment.

Let her be disappointed. This time tomorrow he’d be on his way to some distant shore, his life opening up into the world at last, and she and Mycroft could fuss over the throne themselves.

As theatrically as he could manage, Sherlock stifled a yawn; the Chancellor’s shoulders moved with what he could tell was a silent sigh, and she glanced away.

“Not a fan of all this fuss, Your Highness?”

The voice, low and amused, drew his attention back to the receiving line. Currently presenting his hand for a handshake, mouth tipped up in a knowing smile, was a plainly dressed gentleman with glittering black eyes.

“Don’t blame you a bit,” the stranger went on. “Lord James Moriarty of Eire, Provost of Appledore University.”

For the first time all evening, Sherlock found himself genuinely intrigued, a shock to his system that registered like a breath of sharp cold air through the summer night. Even if he hadn’t studied affairs of state quite as extensively as Mycroft, he had read dozens of volumes of writing published by the university presses in Eire; the name Appledore had appeared on a handful of them. 

“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” he said—the first time he’d meant that all evening, too—as he shook the man’s hand. “I wonder if I could talk to you a bit about the university, actually.

“Of course, Your Highness,” Lord James said smoothly, the smile stretching into a grin. “What did you want to know?”   
  



End file.
